In recent decades there has been a terrific development in the attitude towards children, childhood and children’s culture. Children are no longer seen as inarticulate objects that the grown-ups by right and duty lead out of their childhood and into their adulthood in the overall framework of pedagogic and developmental methods. Children of today are seen as social actors and as independent players in their own childhood as well as in the society and culture they are a part of.
In the Danish field of cultural communication “culture for, with and by children” has become an all-pervading slogan. But without communicators and scholars in the field having come to an agreement about what the slogan – and especially the concept of “culture by children” – actually covers.
Using an aesthetic approach to children’s own culture Beth Juncker, children’s culture scholar, makes what she calls a “tidying-up” of the concept in her doctoral thesis, Om Processen (About the Process), and she constructs a model for what she sees as the two current paradigms of children’s culture: The normal paradigm asks the overall question: “What does art and culture do for and with children?” The new paradigm asks: “What do children themselves do with culture?”
Basing my thesis on Juncker’s paradigmatic thinking and her new aesthetic approach to children’s culture it is my purpose to investigate how theory and reality go together in children’s culture today. Using the project of “Børnekulturpilot” (a children’s culture project in Copenhagen) as an example of the reality of children’s culture and interviews with the participating children I examine and discuss Juncker’s theories and paradigms and their practicability.
I wish to reach a concept of practicability of “culture by children.” With this thesis I hope to participate in the debate about whether “culture by children” serves a purpose in a social and educational structure that sees innovation and creativity as indispensable resources on the future global labour market, but at the same time still focuses on children’s formal knowledge and measurable capabilities instead of on their creative abilities.